1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a gardening system and a method, and more particularly to an improved and efficient system for watering plants in various types of pots or gardening containers.
2. Description of the Related Art
An integral part of gardening is providing adequate moisture to the plants. Conventional watering tools range from a simple watering can to automated sprinkling systems. Watering is critical to growing plans in private gardens, as well as at the commercial gardens or farms. However, providing correct volumes of water to the plants is even more critical. While too little water results in drying and perishing of the plants, too much moisture can result in rotten plant roots, which results in perished or poorly grown plants as well.
Therefore, measuring and monitoring of the soil moisture content is very crucial, especially in case of large number of pottery and other plant growing bedding (i.e., containers) placed in multiple locations over a substantial territory—for example in a large number of the flower pots positioned over a family property or all over a large commercial gardening site.
Conventional soil moisture measurement systems employing automated watering (or sprinkling) systems use an “across the board” moisture measuring probe, which only indicates that “a soil moisture level is below a preset parameter.” Obviously, such systems do not work well for the gardeners growing different types of plants or flowers requiring completely different watering patterns and moisture levels for the most efficient growth.
Moisture content within each individual flower pot or plant container is a most crucial parameter vitally affecting the development and vegetation of the flowers and/or plants. Contrary to a common belief that high enough moisture level secures the normal development of the plant/flower, the good gardening practice requires more thorough control of the moisture within a relatively confined range. The desired moisture levels differ not only from plant to plant, but also according to a phase of the plant development and deviations of the other ambient parameters (e.g., an air/soil temperature, intensity and duration of a day light time, etc.).
Moreover, according to a good gardening practice, the moisture monitoring should be performed at the plant roots, rather than at an arbitrary point (close to the surface of the pot). This requires correct placement or even relocation of a moisture probe along the soil levels from the roots to the surface. However, the conventional moisture probes or automated moisture measuring systems do not provide for efficient measuring at different soil levels on a pot-to-pot basis. Additionally, it is desired by the gardeners to be able to process soil moisture-related data and acquire some watering (or other) recommendations for a particular type of a plant, soil type, climate, etc. None of the existing systems provide the desired services.
For example, US Patent Publication 2004/0036484 describes a measuring device embedded into a pot and exposed to the pottery soil next to the wall of the pot. The measuring device has an electric circuitry having a resonance frequency, which depends on the moisture level of the pot soil. The resonance frequency is determined by means of pairing an embedded device with an external radio transmitter, which sweeps certain frequency range and identifies the resonant frequency as the one that exhibits the best radio-wave pairing between devices.
Although the proposed device does exhibit the pairing between an embedded part and an external one, this pairing is rather used as a metrological instrument and does not provide for a true data exchange between the moisture measuring device and an external information system of any kind.
The US Pat. Publication 2011/0144812 and the U.S. Pat. No. 5,992,092 describe devices for automated watering of the pottery plants. Although these systems have multiple embedded moisture sensors, their outputs are not available, neither for an immediate human perception, nor for a transfer to an external intelligent information system for analysis and recommendations. Instead, the moisture level-related data is used as a feedback signal in a hard-coded inflexible internal control loop.
In both inventions, the moisture sensor is located on the surface of the pot often quite far from the plant's root system and, thus, does not provide the measurements of crucial importance for the plant development.
Therefore, a system targeted towards a seamless transfer of moisture sensor readouts to an external scalable multi-tiered information system capable of analyzing the moisture level-related data and making recommendations to a gardener is desired. Such system does not require a gardener to manually measure the level of moister and allows the gardener to conveniently read the soil moisture level measurements, send them for processing and receive watering (or other) recommendations.
Accordingly, a method and system for efficient measuring, reading and analyzing the soil moisture level data is desired.